Noxious green algae that scientists fully expect to overwhelm much of western Lake Erie again this summer is coming on strong now, thick as ever along the shoreline between Monroe and Port Clinton and migrating offshore along the Lake Erie islands and parts of Canada.
Without even knowing if it has hit its peak yet, the 2019 bloom is showing all signs of equaling or surpassing scientists’ predictions made in early July that it’ll likely be one of the five largest since record-keeping began in 2002.
“By all accounts, it’s on target,” Tim Davis, a Bowling Green State University algae researcher, said at the University of Toledo’s Lake Erie Center following the second annual and largest “HABs grab,” a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded event that involved 175 samples being drawn within the same time frame Wednesday morning.
Researchers from UT, Bowling Green State University, the University of Windsor, and Ohio State University fanned out across the lake’s western basin all at once, as did officials from Ann Arbor-based LimnoTech, NOAA, and Canadian government agencies.
Other institutions playing a role in sampling or analysis include the University of Michigan, Michigan Technological University, the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, and Wayne State University.
Last year’s inaugural event generated 100 samples and didn’t include Canadians, said Tom Bridgeman, a UT ecology professor and director of the university’s Lake Erie Center.
This year there were eight groups, each assigned to grab as many as 25 samples from predetermined sites based on GPS coordinates.
Mr. Davis said he and his team of BGSU students found evidence of the bloom extending out to Port Clinton and up near the Lake Erie islands, although not as thick yet as what Mr. Bridgeman’s team found closer to the Toledo area between Bono and Luna Pier.
“I would guess it has not peaked yet. That’ll probably be in another couple of weeks,” Mr. Davis said.
Mr. Bridgeman’s team found some areas near the Toledo water intake and especially north of the state line — in southeast Michigan’s Monroe County — with Lake Erie water taking on its familiar pea-soup hue this time of year.
“The water was a bright green, especially near the shore. It’s a big bloom now,” he said.
Mike McKay, a University of Windsor professor who runs that university’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, said he coordinated sampling efforts of three Canadian boats and that one “ran into a fair amount [of algae] west of Pelee Island.”
“There’s a lot of interest in it up here,” said Mr. McKay, who is also a longstanding member of the BGSU faculty.
The size and extent of the bloom is no surprise: NOAA has been tracking it from above for weeks with NASA’s satellite technology and with weekly flyovers the oceanic administration does over western Lake Erie this time of year.
The purpose of the large-scale sample grab goes beyond delineating what is documented via aerial surveillance.
As Mr. Bridgeman noted, it is to collect water samples that can be used to help develop technology for understanding more about real-time toxicity, information that will be especially useful for water-treatment plant operators.
Samples were drawn from six feet below the surface with large tubes.
Results will be benchmarked against what is documented through aerial surveillance, Mr. Bridgeman said.
The goal is to someday predict toxin levels with as much precision as scientists are now predicting biomass. There is no direct correlation between a bloom’s size and its toxicity.
According to NOAA’s latest Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom Bulletin, issued Monday, the most concentrated areas have toxins that exceed the recreational threshold, meaning people should avoid swimming and letting their pets get close to the water.
But lake conditions usually have to get a lot worse to pose a threat to public drinking water systems. The bulletin noted experts expect winds to promote mixing and northeast transport of the blooms through at least Thursday.
No results were immediately available on samples drawn from Wednesday’s eight separate expeditions. They are being split and sent off to area laboratories for analysis, Mr. Bridgeman said.
He reiterated a statement forecasters made in July, that this year’s bloom probably won’t set a record for biomass because this spring’s unusually heavy and persistent rain kept many farmers from fertilizing and planting seed. Had it been a normal season for fertilization and planting, this year could very well have set a record for biomass.
Researchers are in the second year of a three-year research project funded by NOAA to develop portable technology for determining real-time toxin concentrations from boats, Mr. Davis said.
Starting next summer, researchers will enlist groups of “citizen scientists” to help them. Certain groups receiving special training, such as charter boat fish captains, Maumee Bay State Park officials, and water-treatment plant operators from Toledo and Ottawa County, will be assigned toxin-calculating devices about the size of tissue boxes to take on board their watercraft or use with water drawn near their facilities.
Such devices can, within minutes, give readings on toxin concentrations. The information can then be uploaded and sent to scientists with a cell phone app, Mr. Davis said.
Each of those portable devices is expected to cost about $4,000 — far less than a large, stationary device NOAA has in the lake that costs $400,000, he said.
“If that moves forward, there will be a lot of interest in that up here,” Mr. McKay said.
The HABs grab project is led by OSU’s Justin Chaffin, Ohio Sea Grant/OSU Stone Laboratory’s research director.
First Published August 7, 2019, 9:12 p.m.
